RIHANNA’S long-awaited new album ANTi finally dropped last week following one of the most protracted publicity campaigns in recent memory.

More than three long years after her last album release, the Barbadian singer’s eighth long-player was mistakenly uploaded to streaming service Tidal, then hastily removed — before being officially made available just hours later to combat illegal fan downloads of the initial leak.

It was a slapdash release for such an anticipated album, and it appears to have cost Rihanna a lot of early sales.

Ri-Ri offered the album as a free download, and hundreds of thousands of listeners took her up on the offer. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

Tidal, the deluxe streaming service owned by Jay-Z, reported more than one million sales for ANTi in its first few days of release.

The only catch? The album was offered for free for a limited time with use of a special code, so the vast majority of those ‘sales’ were actually free downloads.

Rihanna’s corporate sponsor Samsung actually bought the one million copies, passing them on for free to listeners.

Combine that with the dominance of streaming in today’s market, and we see a very different picture of the album’s early success.

But while the truth is a long way away from Tidal’s trumpeted ‘one million sales’, it’s too early to call ANTi a flop: it’s expected to chart highly in the UK and Australia this week — based on sales alone, not free downloads — and will be available for physical release in stores this Friday, further boosting its sales.

Rihanna’s ‘ANTi’ album cover.Source:Supplied

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